Small business growth will be built on tech adoption

Technology is often the key that unlocks growth and success for enterprises. What can small businesses do to ensure that they own the key to their own digital transformation?

Small business growth will be built on tech adoption

Technology is often the key that unlocks growth and success for enterprises. What can small businesses do to ensure that they own the key to their own digital transformation?

It is no secret that technology can be the missing piece for the success of businesses, but all too often the benefits of digital transformation and tech tools have been dismissed as hype. Small businesses can find it harder to adopt new technology as they often don’t have a dedicated IT team to find, research and implement new tech tools.

So, what are the benefits and opportunities of adopting tech tools? Dropbox and Enterprise Nation have found that by utilising tech, such as collaboration tools, file-sharing and e-Signatures, UK SMBs have the opportunity to not only increase sales but also to save time and money.

Too time-poor for tech?

One of the main concerns for small business owners is finding enough time in the day to tick everything off their list. Smaller teams often mean that staff are stretched in more ways than one and so upgrading to the latest tech stack, understandably, isn’t front of mind.

But research from Dropbox and Enterprise Nation found that small business leaders could save up to 150 hours a year on average from using tech tools, that’s equivalent to nearly four extra working weeks. And this time saved doesn’t only mean that businesses leaders are able to spend time on the parts of the business they love, but it also has a value of £8.1bn.

Tech tools are designed to make our lives easier, and although the number available may seem daunting, they can help SMBs in a wide range of areas. The study shows that being able to work better with teams, suppliers and collaborators was the top benefit (70%) of using tech tools. This was closely followed by connecting with customers (69%) and speeding up processes (62%).

Clearly UK SMBs do see the potential of technology to transform their business, and in fact 72.2% of businesses said that they couldn’t have survived the pandemic without tech tools. However, the report also found that too many are still failing to take advantage of the options available

Bringing down the barriers to adoption

UK small businesses are bullish about their growth prospects – with 68% expecting to grow their turnover in the next three years. But in order to reach their full potential, many SMBs struggle with how to get started with tech.

A lack of expert advice (35%), lack of information (30%) and high costs (41%) were viewed as some of the biggest barriers to tech adoption. There are a vast number of tech tools out there and so many small business owners just don’t know where to start.

This is seen in the fact that video conferencing (66%) and cloud storage (59%) were seen as the most important tools for keeping business going over the past 18 months, but a quarter of business leaders are simply not using these tools.

With businesses of 1-10 employees this digital gap is even more stark as only 34% are very active at keeping up with technology trends, compared to 64% of businesses with 50-250 employees. 

The opportunity missed here for SMBs is potentially huge. With potential savings of 150 hours a year, there is no better time for businesses to be looking at investing more in the future of their growth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Wilson
Andy Wilson
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